I feel I must congratulate the county manager for his handling of the introduction of Ordinance 2010-1315 that will amend the Douglas County code in the use of freight containers in various zoning districts and providing for other property related matters.
This was no April Fool's spoof. In lieu of just taking enforcement against violators of the code that has not been enforced for years, he asked Community Development Director Mimi Moss to draft a new ordinance and take input and direction from the public and the county commissioners.
The honorable goal is to ease impractical, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on freedom of citizens. This was the first step in taking public input and this was further expanded with input from the commissioners. This first reading will result in substantial and fair minded changes to the proposed ordinance.
Mimi Moss gathered the various inputs and will be back with a much better proposed ordinance that will reflect what the people of the county want their property to look like in the future.
I am asking for the same considerations to be given with the airport regulation defining the requirements for a "full service fixed-base operator."
This designation is required to sell fuel at the airport. Similar to freight containers, the regulations were not fair to all concerned and were not enforced for years. To say this is a new day and all regulations will be enforced rigorously without a review of the regulation is not consistent with the above example and fair enforcement of county rules and regulations.
The district attorney has shut down Soar Minden's fuel service and demanding full compliance with the full service operator requirements and this is not consistent with the above example.
For the freight containers ordinance, common sense prevailed and blind and brutal execution of laws that hurt the citizens and local businesses was overruled by political and administrative regulatory good sense. Bravo.
This airport action gives the only other fuel service a monopoly and as a result the price of fuel has already risen by 30 or 40 cents a gallon.
The soaring and small airplane communities are suffering from this denial of competitive pressures as a direct consequence. A flying school at the airport was driven out of business trying to expand its business with an air taxi operation.
After three years of trying to get a new lease to build a hangar for the twin-engine airplane they quit trying and went out of business. Yet, the county wants Soar Minden to have an air taxi operation to satisfy the requirements because they will not accept an agreement with another air taxi operation to provide the service. This hurts the local aviators and goes against the stated policy to support soaring.
The revenues generated by a sailplane fixed-base operator are not as substantial as an airplane operator and as such they should have different requirements. The revenue that soaring brings into the county is substantially higher because people that use the soaring come from all over the U.S. and many foreign countries using the lodging, restaurants, casinos and other facilities within the county.
Most visitors from the U.S. bring their gliders out her to enjoy the best soaring conditions in America and some of the best in the world. This is their family vacation and they stay for a week to a month and enjoy all that Douglas County has to offer.
Similarly, foreigners come from all over the globe and some actually keep gliders here to fly, visiting Minden several times a year. Persecuting the soaring community without a fair look at the requirements is short sighted and may kill or substantially reduce the soaring here that the community has stated is one of the highest goals for the airport.
Let's change the full service fixed-base operator requirements to make it fair for all parties and fix the things that are wrong at the airport before we drive another desirable business off the airport. We all should be trying to help our local government be part of the solution and not to be part of the problem.
Jon E. Hannan is a retired test pilot and fly at the Minden-Tahoe Airport
